Page 50 of The Pirate Queen

Donal finds his melody again and the pipes glide into something that resembles music. Grace hums along happily, and on they wander.

She looks up some time later when the pipes falter, then fade to silence. Donal spins in a circle, scanning the unfamiliar woods. His eyes drift to the tree canopy and he squints. The sun is lost behind a layer of wet-looking cloud. His eyes widen, his lips part in alarm.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“We,” Grace says, smiling in delight, “are lost.”

“You did this on purpose!” Donal gapes at her.

Gráinne pulled her hair back when they left. He should have known she had mischief on her mind. The last time she pulled her hair back, Cook chased them from the kitchens with a broom because Gráinne talked him into stealing a plate of rhubarb tartes. He glares at the lumpy braid on the back of her head as she walks by him, then steps over the knobby root of an oak tree. Lichen grows along the trunk and across the branches. Moss and liverwort poke out from cracks in the bark. And there is his sister, smirking like a mischievous woodland fairy, his own will-o’-the-wisp drawing him into the woods.

She laughs at him.

Keep an eye on your sister, their father had ordered.

He’d done that well enough, hadn’t he? Didn’t let her out of sight since they left the tower house at Kildavnet.

Carrickkildavnet, he’s heard it called. Castle Kildavnet. Doesn’t seem like a castle to him. Donal has seen real castles, stone fortresses along the cliffs of Scotland, England, and Spain. He knows the difference. His father’s homes are grand. But they are only tower houses.

“What have you done?” he demands.

Gráinne slides her hand into the pocket of her apron and pulls out her compass. For two years now she has carried it with her everywhere, like some lodestone. She plays with it as other girls play with their straw dollies.

“Did you know that tampering with a compass is considered a crime?” she asks.

He glares at her in answer.

“Any seaman caught doing so will have his hand pinned to the mast with a dagger.”

“Gráinne.”

She lifts the compass to his face. “This is how you solve the mysteries of the sea.”

“If you want to solve a mystery, help me figure out where we are.”

Donal tucks his pipes back into the bag and drapes it over his shoulder.

He’s reaching for the lowest branch of an ancient ash tree when she asks, “What are you doing?”

“Climbing. If I can get high enough, maybe I can see above the canopy. Then I can find Achill Sound. Then the tower house.”

“The tower house is that way.” She points to his left and slightly behind him. She holds up the compass. Smiles.

“Then why bother getting us lost?”

She shrugs. “Practice.”

Gráinne is just a girl, and a young one at that. So he cannot fathom why he lets her order him around. Why he follows her into woods or goes along with her schemes. Donal knows plenty of girls in the village. Nitwits, mostly. They giggle when they see him. Blushing and blinking as he passes. The chieftain’s son. A ready prize. Twice he’s heard village mothers whispering with Aisling, curious about whether a match might be arranged. Is it too soon? And will Maeve have any say in the matter?

Their da expects him to become Chief of the Name.

His mam expects him to secure her a better station in life.

Maeve expects him to keep his distance.

Éamon—his mother’s husband—expects him to move them all into the tower house when he is named chieftain.

Every sailor on every one of his father’s ships expects him to gain his sea legs and embrace his future as captain.